The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Energetic Bush team, World Bank speech, stem-cell decisions, DLC conference, another voting report, Earley's RNC support, Cuomo's deep pockets, Condit's financial woes:

• Vice President Dick Cheney, "suffering from laryngitis and sipping tea," told a Monroeville, Pa., invite-only audience Monday night that "despite falling gas prices, an energy crisis continues to loom as 'a storm cloud on the American economy,'" the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
• Elsewhere, Bush Cabinet members made similar town hall appearances from Connecticut to South Dakota to push the president's energy plan, the Los Angeles Times reports. Democrats on the Hill "questioned why none of the president's surrogates were dispatched to the region struggling the most with energy supply needs: the West Coast."
• The White House is urging Congress to relieve Cheney "of using any of his official budget to pay for electricity" in his official residence. "The entire electric bill -- an estimated $186,000 this year -- would be shifted to the Navy, which owns the house," the New York Times reports.
• Congressional Republicans are accelerating a drive to expand energy exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which will be taken up beginning today in the House Resources Committee, CongressDailyAM reports. Republicans "face an uphill road" in moving the legislation but quietly hope to create political problems for Democrats by splitting environmentalists... and labor unions."

• In a speech today at the World Bank, "just a day before embarking on his second presidential trip to Europe, Bush was set to stress the central role of free trade in promoting economic prosperity around the world," AP reports
• Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview with USA Today that "China's selection as the site for the 2008 Summer Olympics will put Beijing under 'seven years of supervision' by the international community," which "could prod China's communist government toward more openness and democracy."
• The leaders of India and Pakistan "abruptly broke off two days of marathon negotiations on Monday night" after failing to make any substantive progress on their conflict over Kashmir or on reducing the risks of a nuclear exchange, the New York Times reports.

• Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Monday he has decided "he is against using taxpayer dollars to fund stem-cell research with human embryos," CNN.com reports. Lott "had been circumspect on the issue previously."
• Bush's indecision on federal funding for stem-cell research has provided lawmakers on both sides of the debate an opening in "what could be a pivotal moment in the impassioned debate," the Washington Post reports.
• The House is expected to vote today in favor of a constitutional amendment protecting the U.S. flag and send it to the Senate, "where it probably will be defeated by lawmakers who say saving free speech rights is more important than saving flags from desecration," AP reports.
• The New York Times reports that as a conference committee irons out the differences between House and Senate versions of the new education act, state education officials across the country say "the imminent federal requirement for annual reading and math tests threatens to undermine the testing systems virtually every state has fashioned over the last decade."

• The White House "backed away Monday from the notion of an 'automatic' amnesty for the more than 3 million undocumented Mexicans in the United States but acknowledged that it will consider ways to 'regularize' their status to address a festering issue with Mexico," the Los Angeles Times reports.
• The Bush administration on Monday sought a lengthy delay on a Clinton-era rule "for cleaning up thousands of the country's polluted lakes, rivers and streams while it attempts to rewrite the measure," the Washington Post reports.
• On Monday, Bush announced that he would "extend restrictions first imposed by the Clinton administration that block U.S. citizens from suing foreigners over property seized by the Cuban government after the island's 1959 revolution," the Miami Herald reports.
• The president on Monday gave the Medal of Honor to Edward Freeman of Boise, Idaho, "nearly 35 years after Freeman repeatedly flew his helicopter into enemy territory in Vietnam to rescue U.S. soldiers pinned down by gunfire," the Idaho Statesman reports.
• At Labor Department hearings Monday on repetitive-stress injuries, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao listened as rheumatologist Nortin M. Hadler "repeatedly referred to ergonomic injuries as 'socially constructed' and said 'carpal tunnel syndrome... has nothing to do with what you do with your arm,'" the Washington Post reports. Union representatives called the hearing a sham.

• The Indianapolis Star reports that "the 650 or so Democrats who attended the Democratic Leadership Council's fifth annual National Conversation meeting in Indianapolis on Monday were seeking a revival of their party."
• The DLC gathering was "an effort to recast the party's image on cultural issues and win back the churchgoing, gun-owning, married-with-children voters who abandoned [Al] Gore in November and put George W. Bush in the White House," the Los Angeles Times reports.

• The California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released their Voting Technology Project, a report that shows between "4 million and 6 million Americans either failed to cast votes or had their votes invalidated in last year's presidential election because of faulty equipment, mismarked ballots, polling place failures and foul-ups with registration or absentee voting," the Washington Post reports.
• "The survey suggests immediate reforms that could cut the number of lost votes by half for the 2004 elections," CNN.com reports.

• The Republican National Committee "has jumped into the Virginia governor's race with $295,000 for a first wave of direct mail to help GOP nominee Mark L. Earley," the Washington Post reports.
• Earley's opponent, Mark Warner (D), "has more than three times as much cash to work with over the coming months," the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reports.
• The "New Jersey governor's race was the talk of the national political circuit yesterday, as top officials in both parties" labeled it "an important bellwether," the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
• "Half of the contributors to" South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges' (D) "re-election campaign last quarter were from out-of-state," the Columbia State reports.
• AP reports that the Kansas Legislature is "a source of aspiring governors" for 2002. "Twenty-three of the state's 40 elected governors have had some legislative service on their records."
• New York gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Cuomo (D) raised nearly twice as much money as his primary rival, Comptroller Carl McCall (D), in the first six months of 2001, the New York Post reports.
• Former Chicago Schools CEO Paul Vallas (D), who is running for Illinois governor in 2002, "acknowledged" that his 34-member exploratory committee "is short on heavy hitters, but that's only because he made a 'conscious decision' not to solicit early endorsements from incumbent elected officials," the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
• In requesting "a special legislative session to deal with widespread financial problems in local school districts," Florida gubernatorial candidate Lois Frankel (D) signaled that "education funding is a key weapon with which the Democrats plan to batter" Gov. Jeb Bush (R) "for the next year-and-a-half," the Tallahassee Democrat reports.
• Oscar Stilley, one of Arkansas' "foremost proponents of direct democracy," announced Monday he will run for governor in 2002, though he has yet to decide on which ticket, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.

• A new poll shows that "Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., would have a tight race against 1996 Democratic nominee Tom Strickland," indicating that the two are in a virtual dead heat, CongressDailyAM reports.
• Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., on Monday asked state "legislative leaders to save his seat from the redistricting ax, but failed to win any pledges of support," the Boston Herald reports.
• Massachusetts state Sen. Cheryl Jacques (D), who is running in the 9th District special election, "officially received the endorsement of Emily's List yesterday," the Boston Globe reports.
• And Massachusetts state Sen. Brian Joyce (D), who is also running for the 9th District seat vacated by the death of Rep. Joe Moakley, D-Mass., "yesterday hired two former Moakley staffers" despite earlier "criticism that he disrespected" the late congressman "by too quickly entering the race to succeed him," the Boston Herald reports.
• Maryland state Sen. Larry Haines (R) "says he might mount a primary fight against" Rep. Robert Ehrlich Jr., R-Md., "if redistricting throws them together in a sufficiently conservative district" and Erlich decides not to run for governor, the Baltimore Sun reports.
• Macomb County, Mich., prosecutor Carl Marlinga (D) "confirmed Monday that he will run in the 2002 congressional elections, but still hasn't" decided if he will challenge Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., or run against Secretary of State Candice Miller (R), the Detroit Free Press reports.

• A Jefferson County, Ala., judge ruled Monday that former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry, 72, is "not mentally competent" to stand trail for murder charges stemming from "the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four girls," the Birmingham News reports.
• "Public health officials confirmed yesterday the discovery of" Massachusetts' "first bird infected with the West Nile virus this year," the Boston Globe reports.

• A search Monday for missing intern Chandra Levy in Rock Creek Park "turned up little more than several bones thought to be from animals," the Washington Post reports. Police "will continue to scour two Washington parks this morning."
• Recent reports show that Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., "has few financial resources with which to deal with the personal and political crisis building around him," the New York Times reports.
• The New York Daily News reports that top Democrats are looking at potential successors to Condit if the Levy case "forces the party to recruit another candidate."

• Washington Post executive Katharine Graham remains in an Idaho hospital after suffering "a brain hemorrhage over the weekend that has left her critically injured and unconscious," the New York Daily News reports.
• Researchers "at the University of Minnesota and elsewhere have concluded that blue mass pills" that Abraham Lincoln took "contained so much mercury that they might have poisoned Lincoln, causing mood swings, tremors and neurological damage," the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.